Another night at D&D Encounters followed by a game of Fruit Fair at a friend's house.  Fruit Fair is an interesting game--I am not sure I would have bought it, because I thought it might be like Obstgarten by HABA.  It was a lot more involved and required quite a bot more strategy.  This just proves how easy it is to judge a game by its box. The turn sequence was similar to Nottingham or Steam where the turn order is determined by other actions taken.  The basic idea of the game is to plant and harvest fruit so that you can trade the fruit for victory points.  One of the unusual aspects is that all fruit are equal when trading and that the number of victory points acquired is some what random.  Anyway, I would play the game again, but it is a challenging game with a somewhat silly theme.  For some reason, I would have preferred a little less comical artwork and plastic fruit instead of colored spheres.



Since Monday I have been trimming the hedges out back.  It took me several days to get everything done.  I did all the trimming on Monday, but it was very hot and I kept taking breaks to go inside and cool off.  I also managed to cut one of my outdoor extension cords with the electric trimmer.  My hedges are horrible and the trimming did not make them look any better--I ended up cutting them in half practically.  I also pulled all the vines and most of the weeds that grew around and in the bushes.  I ran out of bags to put the clippings and was not able to finish all the cleanup until today (2 days later).  I did not make it to the store Monday evening to buy more bags since my sister called me and wouldn't get off the phone.  On Tuesday I had several things planned including a meeting with a siding company and an introduction to the CIO at Harvesters--I agreed to do some volunteer work on their tech help desk.  I bagged most of the stuff Tuesday before heading to Harvesters and finished this afternoon so that I could put the bags in the trash to be picked up tomorrow morning.

The Harvesters meeting went well and I will be starting the first week of September.  Right now I will be going there every other week for about 4 hours.  I am excited about this and I think will be good for me intellectually and emotionally. 

The siding guy gave me a pretty good estimate, but being unemployed means I have no extra money.  I really wish I was employed so that I could get a good quality siding at a decent price.  I really like the siding with the insulation behind it giving it some more strength and a better insulation value.  I will probably look at a cheap paint job to keep the house from completely falling apart.  I don't know if they would caulk everything like it really needs to be done.  We'll see what I end up doing.

I still need to get the battery out of the Tracker and hook it up to the charger.  I really need to get rid of the car.  If I can get the battery charged I want to take it to CarMax to get a quote.  If they would give me a couple thousand,I think I would be happy.

I need to get up in the morning and do some of these things, as well as update my resume, so I will go to bed now.